How to Find and Do Work That You Love
What the world tells you is wrong
We all have access to the making money blueprint.
Have a look around on Medium, for instance. It’s cluttered with invaluable career and money advice. You will find everything covered from the highest paid jobs and how to get there to the latest side hustles gigs.
After binge-reading a ton of these well-written articles, I realised something important. If you strive to get pretty darn good at something, you will get pretty darn good and earn lots of money. It doesn’t matter if it’s your profession or a side hustle you do.
Making money is easy. However, the real struggle begins when you find out that money alone will not make you happy. What now?
What The World Tells You is Outdated
If you are like me and recently graduated, you will find yourself pressured by society. While Uni was all about going to parties and making it to class the next day despite the horrible hangover, life suddenly gets serious, and you need to take big decisions. Choosing a career is one of them.
The world tells you that you must get exceptional grades to be accepted into recognized internship positions to polish your CV. All that, to catapult yourself into a well-paid and promising career that will dominate the rest of your life. The emphasis is always on money.
I hate what the world tells us.
And yet, I followed the crowd because that was what you were supposed to do. I too worked my butt off to get good grades in Uni, so I could get that hard to get internship position at a corporate giant.
You know what? It sucked. I hated the work so much that I spent a considerable time in the company’s toilet playing candy crush on my phone. I was pissed, why doesn’t the world tell us to find work that we love?
After beating my candy crush record over and over again, I had enough. It is easy to be fooled, but picking work based on what the world tells you is outdated. If you want to waste your 20s or 30s earning lots of money but doing something that you hate, go ahead, I leave you to it. For me, that is not an option.
Finding Work That You Love Requires Work
Let’s be honest here for a second: Who the hell knows at graduation what kind of work they would love without any experience whatsoever? Sure, you might be an exemption and have everything figured out. But most people, including myself, have no idea. And that’s fine.
Now, I’m not saying that you can’t do anything about it, I’m saying that it’s time to put in the work to find work that you love and that pays. Money alone will not make you happy in the long-term.
We need to identify our reasons that make it worthwhile to get up every morning and start a new day. This is going to sound harsh, but if you’re not willing to get your lazy ass moving to understand yourself better, you might never find what you’re looking for.
It’s hard to hit a target when you don’t know where the target is. Once you see the target, everything comes into clarity and focus, and you will know where to aim.
There is a Japanese framework called Ikigai which will help us to precisely target the work you love. It revolves around the idea to find a person’s life purpose at the intersection of four aspects. You might already know them, but here they are:
- What you love
- What you are good at
- What you can be paid for
- What the world needs
We Are no YouTubers nor Successful Writers
Thriving YouTubers are the best example of people who found their Ikigai: They get to do something they are good at and love doing while providing valuable content to the world and earning an absurd amount of money.
Average writers are the best example of people that struggle to find their Ikigai: They get to do something they are good at and love doing while providing valuable content to the world and earning almost no money.
We are no YouTubers nor successful writers, so let’s consider the following questions to find the work you love, your good at, that pays well and the world needs.
1. What do you love to do?
What things would you do if you could do anything? Ask yourself what you always enjoyed when you were little. Don’t consider things that you would only do for money. To help you identify yours, here is a selection of what I love to do:
- Surfing
- Travelling
- Being in Nature
- Teaching
- Languages
I could have listed 100+ things I love to do, but it’s not about me, and you get the idea. Make your lists as freaking long as possible. Let’s move on to the next one.
2. What are you good at?
What are the things you are pretty good at? You can list anything that comes to your mind, from craft skills to interpersonal strengths. I’m good at:
- Sports
- Fixing Things
- Understanding people
- Learning
- Organising
Now, this is an honest attempt at identifying your strengths. If you struggle with self-evaluation as I did, double-check with friends and family — I always thought I was a good painter until my ex-girlfriend destroyed my fake beliefs.
3. What are the trending things of the future?
Instead of considering what your parents and friends tell you what pays well, I want you to think about the trending things in the future. Usually, things like technology and advanced medicine come to mind. In my case, I came up with:
- Renewable Energy
- Sustainable Development
- Digital Education
A different way to approach this question is to give yourself permission to dream like a five-year-old again. What were the things you wanted to become as a child before you grew up, and everything got too serious?
4. What does the world need?
This is the most important one. Ask yourself how you can contribute to making the world a better place. What are the issues that you want to help solve? Here’s my selection:
- Climate Crisis
- Clean Drinking Water
- Transparency
- Equality
Take your time to think about your answers, I mean it.
Making Sense of The Clutter
It’s time to step back and start to tie as many things together as possible. We need to make sense of all your answers and identify interconnections between the four sections. What are things you love doing that would pay well and help the world at the same time?
The Ikigai of 23-year-old Tim sounds like this:
Working for a renewable energy company to fight climate change by installing solar and wind farms in developing countries worldwide and surfing in the free time.
Now, it is okay if you don’t come up with something precise straight away. My answer is very blurry, as well. But it’s the start that you needed.
Keep in mind that the work you love is dynamic and continuously changing the way your interests, skills and the world around you are continually evolving. 30-year-old Tim might find today’s Ikigai totally stupid. That’s absolutely fine.
It’s not about sticking to the one work that you love today. Instead, never stop searching for work that fills you with purpose even if that means to readjust and reconsider from time to time. Your life belongs to you, not to money.
Conclusion
What the world tells you about finding work is wrong and outdated. You want to find work that you love and that celebrates you. Start to design your life around that idea to become happier and healthier than you have ever been. The Japanese framework Ikigai will help you. Consider the four questions:
- What do you love to do?
- What are you good at?
- What are the trending things of the future?
- What does the world need?
Step back and tie as many answers together as possible. You have your blurry target now. It’s at the intersection of what you love, your good at, and that pays well and the world needs. It’s dynamic and always moving.
Come back to this exercise at different stages in time. Your interests evolve just like your skills and the world around you.
Even if you take the wrong step, readjust, step in a new direction and start again. Your life belongs to you, not to money. Discover work that fills you with purpose, because you are what starts to change the world.
